My Categories and Tags all disappeared! Please HELP!

thita
(@thebrickblogger)

13 years, 1 month ago

Today I checked my blog and I have noted that all of my Categories disappeared form the home-page. Instead it just says no categories.

However when I get into my dashboard it does say I have 31 categories, but when I click on them there is nothing. In addition all my tags disappeared! Now all my posts are in the Uncategorized section, and none of them are tagged!

I have not done anything on my site at all today besides deleting a few spam comments.

The Categories re-appear from time to time on the home-page, but when you click on them no posts show up, and the tags are still all gone. The point is that the whole thing is a mess.

I have read on the Forum here lots of people have had the same problem through the years, but most of them had their questions never answered, and the question closed for comments. I don’t understand why. This is a legitimate questions that seems like a lot of people have. Is this some dark secret of Worpress?

Then there are a few post where people say thigns like check your plugins, or update to the latest version of Worpress. Yes, I’m updated, and I only have 3 plugins, Thesis Openhook, Subscribe to Comments and FLV Embed. None of these have been reported of causing any problems.

Then I have also read some people saying there are some upgrades on Worpress going on. If this is the case please fix this!

The point is that I don’t see any answer anywhere – some place that would explain of what needs to be done to fix this, or even who needs to fix this. Am I supposed to do something, and if yes, what? Or my server? Or is this a Worpress problem? I’m very frustrated and feel discouraged. There is no way to fix this? Do I have to switch over to some other platform and start from scratch again?

Anyhow, I hope there is someone out there who have some answers. If you do please respond! Thanks!

My website: http://thebrickblogger.com/

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

esmi
(@esmi)

13 years, 1 month ago

Have you tried:

– checking through Troubleshooting WordPress 3.1 – Master List

– deactivating all plugins to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s).

– switching to the Twenty Ten theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.

– resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.

– re-uploading the wp-admin and wp-includes folders from a fresh download of WordPress.

– increasing the memory available to PHP:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/253495#post-1017842

– repairing your database?

– checking your server’s error logs?

Thread Starter thita
(@thebrickblogger)

13 years, 1 month ago

Esmi, thanks for the quick response. What does that mean to deactivate my plugins? Does that mean that all of the stuff I have in there will disappear?

For example I used Thesis Openhook. If I deactivate it, will it mean that I will loose everything I have put in there?

And what about my video embed plugin. If I deactivate it will I have to upload all of my videos again?

Same with the theme. If I switch over to an other one, will I loose all of my settings when I want to switch back?

I actually have upgraded to WP 3.1 when it first came out (was that like 2 weeks ago?) I didn’t have problems until today. Woudl that help to narrow down what needs to be done? I don’t want to start going crazy changing things here. I have no idea what I’m doing anyway.

Or if this is a 3.1 problem can I switch back to an older version. I read on the link you provided that this update is full of bugs.

esmi
(@esmi)

13 years, 1 month ago

Does that mean that all of the stuff I have in there will disappear?

No. Your site’s content is saved in your database.

If I deactivate it, will it mean that I will loose everything I have put in there?

No. Plugin & theme settings should also be saved in your database and should be restored when you reactivate the plugin(s) and/or theme.

This is not a known 3.1 issue – although I did give a list to the known issues and their solutions above that you can look through.

Thread Starter thita
(@thebrickblogger)

13 years, 1 month ago

Okay, thanks Esmi, I did check my error log, nothing there. I have no idea how to repair my database, or what does that even mean, but I did go into my cPanel, found something called MySQL Databases and there was a repair button there, so I clicked it. Nothing happened, my site is still messed up, and now the catebories completely dissappeared again (which is probably a co-incidence as they have been appearing and disappearing all afternoon).

I have no inactive plugins. I did check that too.

What I don’t understand is how can something like this “break” when I haven’t even touched it. I mean why do I have to go through all these steps I don’t even understand what they mean when my site was working perfectly fine?

Maybe I’m just not undertanding how websites work, but in real life if I drop something it will break. But it won’t break just sitting on a shelf.

I think I will just let this sit overnight. If it broke by itself maybe it will fix by itself too. Otherwise I have no idea what to do.

Is this common for websites just to go bad like this? Maybe the internet it just not for me. I know how to fix things with glue or nails or screws, but this stuff…I have no idea what it all means.

All I wanted to do is run a simple blog. Anyway I will see how it looks tomorrow. Thanks for trying to help!

dragonsjaw
(@dragonsjaw)

13 years, 1 month ago

When all else fails, ask your web host to restore a backup (if possible) from before the unusual goings on.
Or at least ask them is something is up on your server, perhaps they reset some php or mysql and it didn’t take properly.

I would of course encourage you to do a full back up of your database and xml download now.

Thread Starter thita
(@thebrickblogger)

13 years, 1 month ago

Thanks, Dragon! If this doesn’t clear up by itself by tomorrow, I will contact my web host. My categories came back again, but of course they don’t work properly. The whole thing is so weird.

Thread Starter thita
(@thebrickblogger)

13 years, 1 month ago

Okay, I contated my webhost, and they see no problem. I also deactivated all my plugins, and that didn’t solve anything either.
I wrote them back and asked them if they can reset my site to an earlier date. I’m waiting to hear back on that.

Thread Starter thita
(@thebrickblogger)

13 years, 1 month ago

UPDATE: just as I thought; the solution to the disappearing tags and categories problem was – drumroll please – sleep on it!

Seriously; all my categories and tags are back this morning and run with no problem. I hope they will stay that way.

BTW, this was NOT a problem with my server. I had been in touch with them extensively last night; and they could not see any problems anywhere.

I also checked my tmp folder and it was only 30% full. So, everything was clear on my server’s end.

In addition, there was nothing wrong with my plugins (I only have 3), and disabling them didn’t do anything.

I have also checked for any error logs on my cpanel and there was nothing there.

I’m pretty sure that this is/was a Wropress problem. Last night, the categories were completely gone, then magically appeared for a few minutes (but they were not functional), then they were gone again. This happened many times for hours.

I have also found some strange occurences in the Category section in my admin section of Worpress. The headers for the category section were acting really strangely. It said I had no categories. But when I clicked on the blue banner header, they appeared. They didn’t work, but they were there.

And, amazingly; for about 5 seconds the categories and their functionality came back around midnight, but then they were gone again.

I’m not a tech person, so I can’t explain this, but it seems that the whole categories and tags section in WP was “unstable”, for lack of a better word.

Whoever is responsible for this; please don’t let this happen again!

Matthew Boynes
(@mboynes)

12 years, 11 months ago

This just happened to me for some 400 blogs I host. In my case, the issue was that my /tmp/ dir on my server, which is its own partition, was full. In my case, I noticed this by running df -h. Hopefully this helps someone else out!

bleggate
(@bleggate)

12 years, 8 months ago

Mboynes

Thank you. Your solution was 100% for me too. Took a bit of convincing with the Hosting support but when they looked, yes the tmp partition was full.

Thanks again 🙂

jarnow
(@jarnow)

12 years, 8 months ago

Mboyunes thank you very much! This was the root of my problems too.